Greetings from DLDancers HQ where I have returned after 5 weeks in Columbia, Missouri at the National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar “Jane Austen and her Contemporaries.” I went expecting a dance-free summer: I did not even take any dance shoes or dance clothes, planning to focus on fitness and conditioning (read “go running and do crunches”) instead. But it turns out that there’s no escaping the dance world! One of the seminar participants, Cheryl Wilson, is the author of Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-Century Britain and is an expert on English country dancing–the kind of social dancing that preceded partner dancing as we know it today and that is featured in any remotely accurate Jane Austen adaptation. She regularly teaches dances to her students and at conferences. Of course, once we found that out, only one course of action was possible. I don’t think Srs Hystoricall Dancerz have anything to worry about from our group, but we had SO much fun! Makes me want to start going to JASNA conferences just for the dancing!